The World In A Cart: The World In The Word

When I was thinking of a topic for a post today I was thinking about the future, the repitition of semesters here at work and the changes I make over the years in teaching the same courses. It came to the fore yesterday when I was looking all over my classroom for 6 envelopes with little slips of paper in them. This is a partenting activity that I have been doing for years and it is still one of the best activities we do.

Together these thoughts led me to look back at what I posted on this blog two years ago today. That is what you will be reading below. Enjoy.

When I was in high school (can’t believe I just wrote that) if I wanted information about the world I would dig out an atlas or the encyclopedia. There was lots of information there, but it was not necessarily up to date. Today I wheeled the world into my classroom in one of the school’s Mac-carts.

Ideally the students would all have a netbook or laptop all the time. This isn’t the case yet at my school but still there is a huge change. Today in my class I had students in contact with community agencies in several cities, looking up how to make tied baby blankets, researching statistics on childhood obesity in Canada, writing project proposals, designing websites, designing stickers to go along with a calendar they are making and more. In some other classrooms and schools children are using programs like Skype to talk with students and teachers in other countries and even working on group projects with kids all over.

Has it made things better, this globalization in our education system? It has to be more useful for kids to be planning projects for the community and or with people in other countries than drawing and colouring maps. Does it matter if I know the GDP of a country from three years ago when I can find out the economic reports from last month? The internet lets us keep up with a quickly changing world.

There are some things that don’t change. God doesn’t change, the Bible doesn’t change, although it is are easier to hunt for particular sections and quotes using the computer. When you open an atlas there is information about a lot of places but it is not the world. When we open the Bible and read God’s word that really is the world!